Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I have been looking
forward to this one, but I've also been dreading
it a little bit. I get that. We are looking at
a story today that is practically mythological
in Hollywood. I think for most people, myself
included for a long time, this story is frozen
in a single image. Oh, yeah. You know the one.
White face paint, black trench coat, rain, and
a crow perched on a tombstone. We are, of course,
talking about Brandon Lee. But here's the thing,
and this is why I wanted to do this deep dive.
If you stop at the tragic accident headline,
or if you only know him from The Crow, you are
missing an incredibly complex story. You're missing
almost all of it. It's a story about identity,
about philosophy and about the crushing weight
of legacy. It's a heavy one. And you're right.
The cultural memory is so specific. It's almost
like the tragedy of his death just completely
eclipsed the reality of his life. Just swallowed
it whole. When you mention Brandon Lee, people
immediately think of the curse or they think
of the gun. They think of the end. But looking
through this stack of notes, all the articles
and biographies we have here. The tragedy is
actually just the final punctuation mark on a
sentence that was becoming really, really interesting.
That's the mission today. We are going to move
beyond the headlines. We have a massive archive
of source material here. I mean, interviews,
production notes, even the forensic reports on
the accident and all these anecdotes from his
childhood. A lot to get through. I want to unpack
the man, you know, not just the myth, because
when I was reading through this, what struck
me wasn't just the spooky coincidences. And believe
me, we will get to those. We will. It would this
universal struggle. It's a story about fathers
and sons. It's about trying to carve out your
own. When your last name is literally the most
famous name in your industry. Identity is the
key word for this entire hour. It really is.
If you look at the trajectory, Brandon Lee's
life was a constant negotiation with a shadow
that was, quite frankly, impossible to escape.
Totally impossible. He wasn't just an actor's
son. He was the son of a man who was viewed as
a philosopher king, a martial arts deity. A deity
is the right word. Bruce Lee wasn't just a star.
He was a cultural revolution in human form. And
Brandon had to walk into every room with that
following him. Always. But before we get to the
struggle, let's go back to the very beginning.
Because the Chosen One narrative, it didn't start
when he got into movies. No, not at all. It started
in the delivery room. Literally day one. Brandon
Bruce Lee, born February 1st, 1965, in Oakland.
Son of Linda Lee Cadwell and Bruce. Now, looking
at the birth announcements and the letters Bruce
wrote around this time, you see a father who
is just over the moon, completely ecstatic. As
you'd expect. But there is a detail here that
I found fascinating regarding Bruce's reaction
to Brandon's appearance, something he latched
on to immediately. This is the diverse features
comment, right? I couldn't believe this. Yes.
Bruce was proudly telling anyone who would listen
that his son had diverse features. Brandon was
born with blonde hair and gray eyes. I have to
stop you there because when I read that in the
notes, I had to double check it. Blonde hair.
Bruce Lee's son. For real. It's true. It darkened
as he got older, obviously, to the color we all
recognize. But as a baby. Blonde hair, gray eyes.
And Bruce absolutely loved it. He was going around
telling people that Brandon was perhaps the only
Chinese person in the world with those specific
traits. Wow. It played right into Bruce's entire
worldview. He saw himself as a bridge between
the East and the West, you know, culturally,
philosophically. And he was his son. literally
embodying that bridge in his DNA. That puts a
lot of symbolic weight on a baby. You are the
bridge between civilizations, kid. No pressure.
No pressure at all. And the physical expectations
started immediately, too. There is this great
anecdote from his grandmother, Grace Ho. She
claims that by the age of 5 '5", Brandon could
already kick through an inch -thick board. Okay,
let's look at that critically for a second. Five
years old. Breaking boards. Is this a proud grandmother
exaggerating a little or was he actually that
conditioned from day one? Well, knowing the environment,
I think it's probably a bit of both, but mostly
truth. You have to remember, Brandon wasn't just
living in a house. He was living in a mobile
dojo. Right. The family split their time between
Hong Kong and the U .S. Brandon was on the set
of Enter the Dragon. He was hanging off the equipment.
He was absorbing the mechanics of martial arts
before he could even properly read. It was just
the air he breathed. But then the air gets sucked
out of the room. 1973. Brandon is eight years
old. And Bruce dies. Suddenly. And the world
stops. It does. We don't need to re -litigate
Bruce's death here. That's a whole other deep
dive. But we absolutely need to talk about the
impact on an eight -year -old boy. Losing a father
is traumatic for anyone. But losing a father
who is then immediately canonized as a saint,
that's a different kind of trauma entirely. That
is the crucial distinction. Suddenly, his dad
wasn't just the guy who played with him in the
yard. He was a global icon on T -shirts, posters,
and statues. Right. He became public property.
Exactly. And the family moves back to California.
And Brandon is trying to... process this immense
grief while everyone around him is literally
worshiping the man he lost. And this leads to
what I call the dojo dilemma. This part of the
research really got to me. So he's 9 or 10 years
old, he's grieving, and he's sent to train with
Danny Nassanto. Right. And Danny Nassanto is
a legend. Bruce's top student, one of the best
martial artists alive. It makes sense on paper.
You think, the son must learn the father's art.
It's the logical next step. But Jeff Imada, who
is helping... teach the kids classes at the time.
It becomes this huge part of Brandon's life later.
He noticed something was wrong. Brandon couldn't
focus. He was struggling. And it wasn't because
he wasn't athletic. It was the environment. It
was the walls. The dojo was covered in massive
posters of Bruce Lee. Imagine that. You were
a little kid. You're trying to learn how to throw
a kick. And you look up and there's a five foot
poster of your dead dad. doing that same kick
perfectly, like a god. That sounds like a psychological
nightmare. It's like trying to learn to paint
in a room filled with Rembrandts, and Rembrandt
was your dad, and everyone expects you to be
the next Rembrandt. Precisely. It was suffocating.
Jeff Amata said it was just too much pressure
for a child. He was being constantly compared
to a finished product, a legend, while he was
just starting. So what does he do? He does the
only thing a sane teenager would do in that situation.
He quits. I love this pivot. He just walks away.
He walks away entirely in his mid -teens, puts
it all down, and he picks up soccer. Soccer,
which in the 1970s and 80s in America is about
as far away from cool martial arts action hero
as you can possibly get. It was a very specific
rebellion. It was a sport his father didn't dominate.
It was a field where he could just be Brandon,
the guy with the gray eyes who ran fast, not
Little Dragon. Just a normal kid for a minute.
Or trying to be. And he's a rebellious kid in
general. The source material mentions he was
actually expelled from Chadwick School, a pretty
prestigious place, just months before graduation.
What did he get expelled for, do we know? General
misbehavior. Acting out. The details are a bit
fuzzy, but it fits the profile. He was angry.
He was smart, but he was angry. He eventually
had to get his GED from Miralest High. But that
break? That step away from the dojo and into
the soccer field and eventually into trouble
was necessary. He needed to figure out who he
was in a vacuum. And that vacuum eventually filled
up with acting. Right. But not action movies.
He went to Emerson College in Boston. He went
to the Lou Strasberg Institute in New York. He
wanted to be a serious thespian. He did. He joined
the Eric Morris American New Theater. He was
studying the craft. He wanted to do Shakespeare.
He wanted to do serious drama. He wanted to be
recognized for his ability to emote, not his
ability to punch. But Hollywood is a machine.
And the machine saw the name Lee, and it had
other ideas. Very different ideas. Which brings
us to the most ironic and, frankly, kind of painful
start to a career I can imagine. 1986, his first
credited role. Oh, this is just... Kung Fu. The
movie, the irony is so thick you could cut it
with a knife. It's unbelievable. For some of
our younger listeners who might not know, you
have to explain the context of the Kung Fu TV
show and why this casting was so loaded. Okay,
so back in the early 70s, Bruce Lee pitches a
show to Warner Bros. called The Warrior. The
concept. A Chinese martial artist wandering the
American Old West. His idea. His idea. His concept.
The studio loved the concept, reworked it, and
called it Kung Fu. But they didn't cast Bruce
Lee. They told him he was too Chinese for the
American audience. Instead, they cast David Carradine,
a white actor, and had him play Kwai Chan Kane,
a half -Chinese monk. It was a massive sore point
for Bruce and his entire community. It was seen
as a theft of his creative idea. So Bruce gets
passed over. The show becomes a huge hit with
a white guy in the lead. Fast forward to 1986.
They're making a TV movie reunion and they call
Brandon. And they cast Brandon to play the illegitimate
son of David Carradine's character. I mean, how
did he accept that? That feels like such a slap
in the face. Hey, come play the son of the guy
who took your dad's job. He didn't want to do
it initially. He really didn't. Jeff Amato was
working stunts on that film, and he said Brandon
was actively avoiding it. But, and this shows
a level of maturity that is pretty impressive
for a 21 -year -old, he eventually rationalized
it. He found a way to make it make sense. He
framed it as a form of justice. Justice. How
so? Yeah. He felt like by taking the role, he
was reclaiming the space that was denied to his
father. He was putting a real Lee into the franchise
that should have been theirs to begin with. That's
a very pragmatic way to look at it. I'm going
to take the check and I'm going to take the spotlight
back. Exactly. And honestly, he's good in it.
He has this raw intensity. But it trapped him.
The second he threw that first punch on camera,
the serious actor from New York dream was put
on hold and the action star expectation just
took over. It was inevitable. So he went to Hong
Kong next. He made a film called Legacy of Rage.
Which was his only Hong Kong film, right? His
one and only. Shot in Cantonese. And he had to
learn all the Cantonese phonetically because
he wasn't fluent, which is incredibly difficult.
He clashed with the director, Ronnie Yu. It was
a really tough shoot for him. So the experience
wasn't great, but how was the movie? The movie?
It's actually really solid. It was a hit in Japan,
got nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award. He
proved he could carry a Hong Kong action movie,
no question. But he didn't stay there. He came
back to the States. And this is where we enter
what the notes call the B -movie trenches. Oh,
the trenches. The late 80s were a weird time
for action movies. The video store boom was happening,
right? Yeah. And Brandon got caught in that direct
-to -video grinder. We have to talk about Laser
Mission. We absolutely have to talk about Laser
Mission. 1990, filmed in Namibia, of all places,
Brandon plays a mercenary named, wait for it,
Michael Gold. Michael Gold! That sounds like
a character name generated by an algorithm fed
nothing but 80s action scripts. It's perfect.
It is the most generic name possible. And the
movie is. Well, it's something. There are scenes
where he's running around the desert in a bright
blue tank top fighting guys in slow motion with
this synthesizer soundtrack just blaring. It's
peak B movie. It's cheesy. It's low budget. It's
kind of amazing in its own way. But see, I watched
a clip of this recently in prep for this. And
what stands out is that even in this objectively
terrible movie, Brandon is incredibly charming.
He's doing this little smirk. He's adding these
little physical flourishes. He is so much better
than the material. That was always the case.
Even in the failed TV pilot, Kung Fu, the next
generation. Another Kung Fu thing. Yeah, where
he played the great grandson, yet another generational
burden. He had a charisma that just popped off
the screen. But he was frustrated. He was paying
his dues, but he felt like he was paying them
in a currency he didn't want to use. He was the
son. He wasn't Brandon. And that frustration,
it seems, hits a boiling point around 1991. Because
he gets an offer that would have made him a superstar
overnight, but it would have cost him his soul.
The biopic, Universal Pictures, is gearing up
to make Dragon. The Bruce Lee story. Big budget.
Massive marketing campaign planned. And they
come to Brandon and say, We want you to play
Bruce. This is the ultimate test, isn't it? If
he takes this role, he is rich, he is famous,
but he is forever just Bruce Lee's impersonator.
He never gets out of the shadow. Exactly. It's
the final trap. Imagine the psychological minefield.
Here, put on your dead father's clothes, reenact
his romance with your mother, reenact the fights
that made him famous. It's just morbid. Did he
even hesitate? Not really. He turned it down
flat. He said publicly it was awkward and strange
to even think about. He wanted to be his own
man. But there's a detail in the production notes
here that made my jaw drop. The producer, Raffaella
De Laurentiis. Yeah. She was actually relieved
he said no. Why would she be relieved? It seems
like perfect casting. She went on record saying
she didn't think Brandon looked Chinese enough.
You're kidding me. Nope. She said she would have
refused to work on the project if they had to
use makeup to make him look more Asian to play
his own father. That is wow. I mean, on one hand,
I sort of get the visual continuity issue they're
worried about. But on the other hand, telling
Bruce Lee's son he isn't Chinese enough to play
Bruce Lee, that is a special kind of Hollywood
absurdity. It is. It's mind boggling. But Brandon
handled it with so much grace. Yeah. The role
went to Jason Scott Lee, no relation. And Brandon
actually met with Jason. He gave him his blessing.
That's very classy. And he gave him this incredible
piece of advice. He told Jason, do not treat
Bruce like a god. Treat him as a man with a temper
who hated mediocrity. I love that. He's deconstructing
the myth for the guy who is about to play the
myth. It shows how much Brandon had processed
his father's memory. He wasn't bitter. He was
just clear -eyed. And turning down that role
was the best thing he could have done for his
career because it forced him to find his own
vehicle. And that vehicle starts to take shape
with Showdown in Little Tokyo. 1991, Warner Bros.
He's starring opposite Dolph Lundgren. This is
a buddy cat movie on steroids. It's a cult classic
now. It's completely ridiculous, but it's so
much fun. It is. And it was his first big studio
lead. But the reviews at the time were really
unkind. Critics just dismissed it as mindless
violence. However, it got his foot in the door
at the major studios. Which leads to the real
turning point for him. Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire
in 1992. Now, Rapid Fire is interesting because
this is where we see Brandon actually taking
the wheel creatively. He wasn't just a hired
gun anymore. Right. He signed a multi -picture
deal with 20th Century Fox. And he was heavily
involved in the story development from the jump.
He looked at the original script for Rapid Fire
and he saw a generic action movie. And he basically
said, no, let's make this real. How so? What
did he change? Well, the character Jake Lowe
is a student who witnesses a murder and gets
pulled into this mob war. But the original script
had him as this gung -ho Joe action hero. Brandon
fought to make him reluctant. He wanted Jake
to be sarcastic and annoyed and scared. A normal
person's reaction. Exactly. He wanted him to
be a normal guy who just happened to be really
good at fighting, not some superhero. That makes
the character so much more relatable. And he
leaned into the trauma. There was a plot point
where Jake Lowe has lost his father. Brandon
connected with that deeply. Jeff Amato was the
stunt coordinator again, and he remembers seeing
Brandon on set, sitting in his chair, quietly
holding a book of his father's philosophical
writings. On set? While filming? Yeah. Before
a big emotional scene. He was using his father's
own words to emotionally prepare for the scene
where his character talks about his dead dad.
He was mining his own grief for the performance.
That's incredibly brave. That's taking the thing
that hurts you the most and turning it into art.
It is. And the action changed, too. In Rapid
Fire, the fighting isn't just Bruce Lee copies.
He and Amada are credited on the choreography
together. They used Jeet Kune Do concepts. But
Brandon put his own spin on it. He wasn't trying
to move exactly like Bruce anymore. He was moving
like Brandon. This feels like the synthesis.
He's not running from the martial arts, you know,
like the soccer days. But he's not letting them
define him completely either. He's using them
as a tool for his acting. Exactly. And that brings
us to his philosophy. Because you can't be a
Lee without having a philosophy. It just comes
with the territory. We found some really interesting
notes on how his training had evolved by the
early 90s. He wasn't just punching bags in a
gym. No, he had returned to training with Dan
and Asanko in the 80s, but his approach was so
analytical. He was studying Muay Thai, Kali,
Silat, but he was also studying the aesthetics
of violence. He would bring a video camera to
the dojo of video camera in the late 80s. That's
like a giant camcorder on your shoulder. Yeah,
a heavy piece of equipment. He would film himself
training, then he would go home and watch it
back to see which moves looked best on a 2D screen
versus what was actually effective in a real
fight. He was dissecting the difference between
fighting and movie fighting. He was directing
himself before he was ever a director. He was,
and when people asked him about Jeet Kune Do,
he had this very nuanced, very intelligent take.
He refused to say he practiced Jeet Kune Do.
He said JKD was his father's personal expression
of truth, so Brandon practiced his own interpretation
of it. So it's not a style to be copied, it's
a principle to be lived. That's what he believed,
that martial arts was ultimately about self -discovery.
There is that quote about barriers. I think you
called it the barrier theory. This is my favorite
insight of his. It's so profound. He said, every
time you come up against a true barrier to your
progress, you are a child again. You are a child
again. What did he mean by that? He meant that
when you hit a limit, whether it's a physical
weight you can't lift or an acting scene you
can't crack or a philosophical problem you can't
solve, you are forced into a state of not knowing.
You have to be humble. You have to learn. You're
a beginner. You're a beginner again. He said
most people hate that feeling, so they stop.
They only do what they are already good at. But
Brandon loved the barrier. He wanted to be a
beginner. He wanted to break through. That mindset
is exactly what led him to The Crow. Because
The Crow was a massive barrier. It was a role
unlike anything he had ever done. It was a total
departure. 1993, based on the comic by James
O 'Barr. It's dark, it's gothic, it's supernatural.
Brandon plays Eric Draven, a rock musician who
is brutally murdered and comes back from the
dead to avenge his and his fiance's deaths. And
the preparation for this, I mean, we talk about
method acting with guys like Daniel Day -Lewis
or Christian Bale, but... Brandon was right there
with them on this one. He was all in. First,
the physical transformation. He dropped a ton
of weight. He didn't want to look like the buff
action hero from Showdown in Little Tokyo. He
wanted to look like a starving dead rock star.
Gaunt. Exactly. He weighed his food. He did endless
cardio to get that lean, almost emaciated look.
And the ice. You have to tell the listeners about
the ice. This is just wild. For the resurrection
scene, where Eric Draven crawls out of his muddy
grave, it was freezing cold on set in Wilmington,
North Carolina. But Brandon wanted to make sure
the physical shock of coming back to life looked
real. So he didn't just act cold. No. Before
the take, he had the crew bring him bags of ice
from a local store, and he submerged himself
in them. He sat in an ice bath right before they
started rolling. To lower his body temperature,
to make himself shiver uncontrollably, to literally
feel the pain of the cold seeping into his bones.
So when you see him shivering in that scene,
He's not acting. He is freezing to death. That
is dedication on another level. But it also speaks
to how badly he wanted this to work. He wasn't
just phoning it in. Not at all. He saw this as
his hamlet. This was his chance to prove he was
more than an action guy. And the movement choices.
He and Jeff Amata made a conscious decision.
That Eric Draven shouldn't fight like a martial
artist. Why not? Draven is a guitarist, not a
ninja. So they incorporated aerobics. They incorporated
these strange mime -like movements. If you watch
the movie, he moves like a ghost or a marionette
on strings. It's incredibly unsettling. Brilliant.
He took the action hero handbook and just threw
it out the window. Everything was aligning. He
was doing the best work of his life. He was deeply
in love, engaged to Eliza Hutton. They were planning
to get married in Mexico on April 17, 1993, just
a week after filming was supposed to wrap. The
shoot was almost over. And then came March 31.
The day it all fell apart. I want to slow down
here. Because for years, for decades, really,
I heard the rumors. It was the Chinese mafia.
It was a family curse. It was a real bullet swapped
in by an assassin. The Internet loves a conspiracy.
Loves it. But the reality, the forensic reality,
is so much more tragic because it was preventable.
It wasn't malice. It was negligence. It was a
chain of incompetence, a series of small, stupid
mistakes that added up to a catastrophe. And
to understand it, we have to look at the mechanics
of the gun. This wasn't a single mistake on the
night of the accident. It was a two -part failure.
Okay, so walk us through it step by step. What
happened? Okay. Phase one happens about two weeks
before the accident. The production is filming
a close -up scene where a gun is pointed at the
camera. For this kind of shot, they need the
gun to look fully loaded. They needed to see
the bullet tips in the cylinder. Right, because
an empty gun or a gun with blanks looks different
on a close -up. Exactly. Normally, you use commercially
made dummy rounds for this. A dummy round looks
like a real bullet, but it has no primer and
no gunpowder. It's completely inert. It's just
a piece of metal. Safe. Totally safe. But the
production was running behind schedule, and they
were cutting costs. And the source material indicates
the prop department decided to make their own
dummy rounds to save time. They made their own.
That sounds like a major red flag already. A
huge red flag. They took real cartridges, pulled
the bullets out with pliers, dumped out the gunpowder,
and then put the bullets back in. But, and here's
the first fatal error, they left the live primer
in the base of the cartridge. The primer is the
little cap on the bottom that sparks when the
hammer hits it? Correct. It has a tiny amount
of explosive force, just enough to make a pop.
Oh. So during that earlier filming session, someone
on set pulled the trigger on one of these homemade
dummy rounds. The primer went off pop. But there's
no gunpowder, so the bullet doesn't fly out of
the barrel. Not fully. But the small force of
that primer was just enough to push the bullet
out of its casing and shove it about an inch
into the barrel of the gun. It got stuck. A squib
load. That's the technical term, right? A squib
load. The bullet is now lodged in the barrel.
But because there was no big bang, no smoke,
no recoil, nobody checked the barrel. They just
put the gun away. So for two weeks, that revolver
is sitting in the prop room with a bullet blocking
the barrel and nobody knows. Exactly. Now fast
forward to phase two, March 31st. The scene they're
filming is the one where Eric Draven is killed
in the flashback. The actor Michael Massey, playing
the character Fun Boy, has to shoot Brandon.
For this scene, they need noise and a muzzle
flash, so they use blanks. And a blank is just
a cartridge with gunpowder and a primer. Right.
No actual bullet. Right. The end is either crimped
or has a cardboard wad. It explodes, makes a
bang, but nothing is supposed to shoot out. Except...
Except they loaded a full -power blank into the
same gun that had the bullet from two weeks ago
stuck in the barrel. Oh, God. It's like a makeshift
rifle at that point. It's a loaded weapon. So
when Michael Massey pulled the trigger... The
explosion of the blank slammed into the back
of that lodged bullet. It propelled that bullet
out of the barrel with almost the same velocity
as a live round. So physically, it became a real
gunshot? Physically, it was identical to a real
gunshot. Where was the armorer? Isn't there supposed
to be a weapons expert on set checking the barrel
before and after every single take? That is the
core of the tragedy. The film had a firearms
consultant, but due to budget and schedule constraints,
he had been sent home early that night. The gun
was being handled by the prop master, who was
not a firearms expert. Nobody checked the barrel.
That is just infuriating. They're saving a few
hundred dollars on an expert's salary and it
costs a man his life. It's negligence. Plain
and simple. So the cameras roll. Michael Massey
fires the gun. Brandon falls backward. And the
crew, they thought he was acting. They did. The
script actually said he was supposed to fall
forward onto a table. He fell back onto the floor.
But Brandon was known for improvisation. He was
known for being intense. So the director yells,
cut, and for a few seconds, nobody moves. They
think he's just staying in character. How long
until they knew something was horribly wrong?
Jeff Hamada was there. He walked over to him.
He saw Brandon breathing heavily, this rhythmic,
gasping breath. But he wasn't responding. Then
the on -set medic, Clyde Basie, came over and
checked him. He found a pulse. But here's the
scary thing. There was almost no external bleeding.
Really? From a gunshot? The bullet entered his
abdomen and did massive internal damage, lodging
near his spine. From the outside, it just looked
like a small puncture wound. So they didn't realize
the severity of it immediately? Not until his
pulse started to fade a few minutes later. They
rushed him to the hospital in Wilmington. Surgeons
worked on him for six hours. They pumped gallons
and gallons of blood into him. But the damage
to the major arteries was too catastrophic. He
was pronounced dead at 1 .03 p .m. the next day.
28 years old. 28. Just starting. I can't even
begin to imagine what that set felt like. And
poor Michael Massey, he was the one who pulled
the trigger. Massey was devastated, utterly destroyed.
He took a year off from acting immediately. He
never watched the film. He said in interviews
years later that he still had nightmares about
it. It wasn't his fault, not in any legal or
moral sense, but he carried that burden for the
rest of his life. So the production shuts down,
the star is dead, and they have eight days of
filming left. This brings up a huge ethical question.
Do you finish the movie? It was debated heavily.
The studio, Paramount, was ready to scrap it,
take the insurance payout, and just bury the
film. I can see why. It feels ghoulish to continue.
It does. But Eliza Hutton, his fiancée, and Lindley
Cadwell, his mother, they intervened. They said
Brandon was so proud of this performance, he
believed it was his best work. They said he would
have wanted it to be seen. So how did they do
it? This was 1993. We didn't have the kind of
CGI we have now. No deep fakes. They were basically
inventing the technology as they went. They used
Brandon Stunt Doubles, a guy named Chad Stahelski,
and another named Jeff Katienti. Wait, wait.
Chad Stahelski, as in the director of the John
Wick movies? The very same. He was Brandon Stunt
Double and a good friend. He knew Brandon's movement
perfectly, so they filmed the remaining scenes
with Chad, often in shadow or from the back.
And for a few key shots, they used very early,
very expensive digital compositing to paste Brandon's
face from unused footage onto the double's body.
That must have cost a fortune. It cost them an
extra $8 million to do, but they finished the
film. And when it came out, I remember the atmosphere.
It wasn't just a movie release. It felt like
a public wake. It opened at number one, made
over $50 million at the box office. But the reviews.
That's what really matters. Critics didn't just
pity him. They were genuinely blown away by the
performance. The Washington Post said he haunts
every frame. Roger Ebert's review is the one
that really sticks with me. What did Ebert say?
Roger Ebert, who was famously tough on action
movies, wrote that The Crow was Brandon's best
film. And then he said something that I think
Brandon had been waiting his whole life to hear
someone say. He said it was a better film than
any of his father's films. Wow. That is the validation.
That is the mountain finally climbed. He did
it on his own term. And he never got to read
it. That is just heartbreaking. He finally steps
out of the shadow. He finally creates this singular
piece of art that stands completely on its own.
And he's gone. It cemented him as a legend, but
a tragic one. We never got to see him do a romantic
comedy. We never got to see him play a villain
or do Shakespeare. We just have this one perfect
gothic performance frozen in time. Before we
wrap up, I want to talk about the wedding that
never happened because there is a detail about
the invitations that gave me chills when I read
it. The quote. The quote. He and Eliza had chosen
a passage from a book to print on their wedding
invitations. And now that same passage is carved
on his tombstone in Seattle, right next to his
father. It's from Paul Bowles' novel, The Sheltering
Sky. Brandon loved this book. And in the context
of his death, dying at 28, thinking he had decades
left, the words are just haunting. You have it
there. I think you should read it for us. I do,
it says. Because we don't know when we will die,
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens only a certain number
of times, and a very small number, really. How
many more times will you remember a certain afternoon
of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply
a part of your being that you can't even conceive
of your life without it? Perhaps four or five
times more, perhaps not even that. How many more
times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps
20. And yet... It all seems limitless. And yet
it all seems limitless. He thought it was limitless.
He had the career, the girl, the philosophy all
figured out. And it was gone in a literal flash.
That is a heavy thought to leave on. But I think
it's the necessary one. Brandon Lee wasn't just
the crow guy. He was a philosopher, a rebel,
a reluctant fighter, and an artist who was just
finding his voice. Absolutely. If you take anything
away from this deep dive, let it be this. Go
watch Showdown. in Little Tokyo. Go watch Rapid
Fire. And then watch The Trow. But don't just
watch for the kicks and the action. Watch for
the guy who is smirking at the camera, who's
in on the joke, who is trying to tell you that
he's so much more than just a name. Thanks for
listening to this deep dive. This one is going
to stay with me for a while. We'll catch you
on the next one. Take care.